We often paint these pictures in our minds of nature, red in tooth and claw, but it is not so.

Be it a pride of lions, a school of sharks or a lone, young spider – the tale is the same. The prey are numerous, they often get away, and the “big bad predators” have to stay hungry a lot of the time.

Above is a snapshot of a wasp (or a fly of some sort) getting away from the clutches of a juvenile Argiope spider. You can see the little white bit of spider silk it’s all but gotten itself out of. The wasp was flying around quite woozily for a while afterwards, having been bitten at least a little by the spider, but clearly not enough to succumb.

The first two tiles of the collage illustrate how the spider can switch between sides of the web, through a little hole that I had described earlier.